Keith Thomas - Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500 - 1800

There are some surprising insights in Keith Thomas' study of how English attitudes to nature changed over time. One of them is that the rise of the "cult" of roast beef in England only took place as the animal's role as a working animal declined. There are many similar examples; people would happily eat particular animals or birds in one century, considered them beyond edible a few years later.

These changes are not simply to do with taste (in both senses of the word). They are in part a result of changing understandings of science, and of the human position in the natural world. In Tudor and Stuart times, the dominant approach to nature flowed from that suggested by the Bible. Everything in nature, plant or animal, had been placed there by god for human use. As an early 17th century poem put it:

“The pheasant, partridge and the lark
Flew to thy house, as to the Ark.
The willing ox of himself came
Home to the slaughter, with the lamb;
And every beast did thither bring
Himself to be an offering”

This sometimes leads to ideas that seem laughable today. A preacher in 1696 claimed that "Camels... had sensibly been allotted to Arabia, and savage beasts 'sent to deserts, where they may do less harm'. It was a sign of God's providence that fierce animals were less prolific than domestic ones... usually coming out only at night when men were in bed." Certainly a case of putting the cart before the horse.

Those that argued that humans themselves where animals, "remained a minority" until the 19th century. But as the 19th century drew closer there was growing recognition that some animals "did not fall short of man". Keith Thomas notes throughout the work how even in the earliest period covered people were aware of the intelligence of animals, their skills and often attributed human-like qualities to them. In 1679, it was noted "That there are some footsteps of reason, some strictures and emissions of ratiocination in the actions of some brutes, is too vulgarly known and too commonly granted to be doubted."

This changing awareness and understanding of nature was partly scientific, but it was also ideological. As the world changed, so did attitudes to the world. Sometimes this was forced upon people, as when in the early days of capitalism, private property in nature was enforced by the enclosures and anti-poaching laws. These sometimes had wider changes. Thomas notes for instance that enclosures helped led to the decline of the sport of the feudal aristocracy, hawking.

Hunting plays a big part in Thomas' story. Partly because it is one aspect of human relationships to animals that is frequently documented. Sometimes in the journals of feudal lords, sometimes in parliamentary acts designed to restrict the practise. Thomas argues that with the development of industrialisation there was a corresponding change in attitudes to animals and nature. The beginnings of the early movements against animal cruelty can be dated to this period, and were frequently associated with wider social demands.

Most fascinating of all, Thomas also notes that changing attitudes to nature were also noted in the landscape. Before 1700 mountains were considered "distasteful", described as "warts" or "boils". But, Thomas argues, with the increased rural changes associated with the expansion of cultivation which regulated and created a more uniform countryside, the wildness of mountains began to be sought and appreciated.

Keith Thomas' book is a unique and detailed book. While full of fascinating information, I felt at times that it failed quite to explain why people's attitudes towards nature changed. In particular I think it should have drawn out how, with the development of capitalism, nature became increasingly a commodity and people related to it as they did to other commodities through its exchange value. Thomas doesn't neglect this aspect, but it is downplayed.

Nonetheless this criticism shouldn't prevent anyone from reading this entertaining, important and fascinating work of history.

Related Reviews

Cronon - Changes in the Land
Tully - Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties
Foster - Marx's Ecology
Linebaugh - Stop Thief! The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance

Christopher Priest - Inverted World

I am very surprised that it has taken me this long to discover and read this truly unusual science fiction novel. Perhaps this is because I read the original short-story back in New Writings in SF number 22 (Yeah, I'm sure you all have it on your shelves too) and subconsciously crossed it off the list. What ever the reason I'm glad I discovered it, because it opens up a whole new authors works to me.

Inverted World is based around a single city known as Earth. The city moves forward, towards an 'optimum'. Its movement isn't constant because it must navigate around mountains and across rivers. The city's workers must also constantly lay tracks in front of the city, removing them as the city crosses. This idea of a constantly moving city is not uncommon in science fiction. Both China Mieville and Iain M. Banks played with the idea. The difference in Priests' excellent world is the political and economic structure that forms the real basis to the story. In particular the city's guild system into which the inhabitants fit, and which serves to keep the city working, moving and functioning.

The guilds maintain order but they also maintain secrecy. Only a few of the city's inhabitants understand why the city must keep moving, or the reality of what is outside. Explaining that would ruin the story, and indeed the excellent ending. Though it is worth noting that the world that Christopher Priest has created is unique and very clever. But what makes the novel is what happens as the guild system begins to break down. The reasons for this are complex, but the question of population crisis, food and resource shortages and the role of the city in the wider role all play their part. Priest's novel is also unusual for 70s science fiction in having some excellent strong female roles. The ending is also very well done, though those who have read the original short story (all seven of you) should note that it is very different, and the novel is infinitely improved in style, characters and editing. If you like SF and you like a clever idea (and you also like urban rebellion against authority, for that too plays a key role) then read Inverted World.

Related Review

Priest - The Affirmation
Priest - Airside

G.M. Trevelyan - English Social History

George Macaulay Trevelyan's English Social History is a classic work. Finished in the years leading up to World War Two it reflects the time in which it was written. By its very nature it is a sweeping history, so sometimes it misses detail in favour of general statements and broad assessments.

While it is a social history, it is not socialist history, nor even history from below. By social, Trevelyan seems to mean anything that effects the broadest social structure and practice of everyday life. This means he is as happy to talk about kings and queens, as he is about ploughmen and factory workers. One of the weaknesses though, is that Trevelyan concentrates on the former at the expense of the later. The reader will quickly note that many chapters are named after the era of particular great men.


Trevelyan sums up his approach in the introduction:

"The Puritan Revolution and the Restoration were social as well as political events. But, on the whole, social change moves like an underground river, obeying its own laws or those of economic change, rather than following the direction of political happenings that move on the surface of life. Politics are the outcome rather than the cause of social change. A new king, a new Prime Minster, a new Parliament often marks a new epoch in politics, but seldom in the life of the people."

Unfortunately this is, to my mind, a completely inadequate approach. Seldom do new PMs, or Parliament mark new epochs in British History, and social change has its own laws, but is completely linked to the politics and economics of the time. Trevelyan here, and elsewhere in the book, implies that social change occurs gradually, and in fact he frequently suggests that England is unique for not suffering the convulsive change that marked some countries. Indeed, without any tongue in check, Trevelyan claims that

"Village cricket spread fast through the land. In those days before it became scientific, cricket was the best game in the world to watch, with its rapid sequence of amusing incidents, each ball a potential crisis! Squire, farmer, blacksmith and labourer with their women and children came to see the fun, were at ease together and happy all the summer afternoon. If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt."

Such sweeping (and ridiculous) claims would, it seem, at first to mean that this book has no value to the student of history. But I would suggest the opposite. Firstly, while Trevelyan reflects the opinions of a particular class he is also an extremely knowledgeable, readable and entertaining writer. The book is filled with figures, poetry and source material that will help the reader get an excellent over-view of English history and its key periods.

But this aside, the reader of English Social History is constantly reminded of Trevelyan's main thesis. For the author English history has been one of a long, gradual development until the 20th century. And the pinnacle of this history was threatened by German Fascism. While Trevelyan is too honest a historian to pretend that there haven't been periods when ordinary people have been poor, or the ruling class engaged in repression, the general historical trend has been one of progress and economic improvement. This is Trevelyan suggests because it just wouldn't be English to do anything else.

"The worst horrors of failure, of unemployment and of unprovided old age were not suffered by the poor in England to the same extent as in the continental countries... The scandal and danger of such congregations had alarmed the Tudor and Stuart governments; the Poor Law was meant to prevent them, and did prevent them... That is one reason why there was never anything like the French Revolution in our country and why through all our political religious and social feuds from the 16th to the 19th centuries, the quiet and orderly habits of the people, even in times of distress, continued upon the whole as a national characteristic."

Indeed, class struggle in England has only served to make those taking part realise it is pointless. So Trevelyan writes of the 19th century trade union struggles that,
 
"The harsh discipline of the strike and lock-out taught the two parties to respect each others strength and understand the value of fair negotiation."

It is almost as if strikes, protest and workers' movements achieved nothing at all - perhaps the vote, trade union rights, the right to strike, or improved pay and conditions, came only through negotiation? Indeed so good has been the development of English capitalism and the associated military strength, that Trevelyan sees its benefits spread across the globe. "On the whole our supremacy in the oceans and along the shores of the world was used in the nineteenth century on the side of peace, goodwill and freedom. If it were to be destroyed, mankind would breathe a harsher air"

This will have been news to those who suffered in the colonies, as their economies were geared towards making profits English capitalists. But this last quote betrays the purpose of his book. England is, in this authors' view, uniquely positioned because of its national character, and its history, to bring justice and democracy to the world. As the book was published, this was under-threat, and everyone had to rally to the English flag to protect England's uniqueness and prevent the world breathing a harsher air. That English capitalism had been polluting the air of millions of people in the name of profit and the free-market for decades is lost on Trevelyan.
 
History isn't as simple as Trevelyan thought, and England certainly wasn't as unique as he dreamed. So while there is much in this book that modern readers will find useful and enjoyable, it is also sadly flawed.

John Scalzi - Redshirts

A few years ago someone produced a red t-shirt in the style of a star trek uniform, the word expendable written across the chest. The running joke about the life expectancy of a "redshirt" on an away team mission with Star Trek's stars is an old one. John Scalzi has turned it into a wonderfully comic novel that is far more than this single joke. There are plenty of nods towards those who know their Star Trek, in-jokes abound, but this novel is far more than that.

The story centres on a group of new arrivals on the star-ship Intrepid whose mission is to explore the galaxy. Quickly they realise that there is something strange going on, and as the older hands vanish everytime the captain comes looking for people to join them on a mission planet-side, the gradually realise that the Intrepid has one the highest casualty rates of any spaceship in history. Eventually they come to understand that they are characters in a television piece and concoct their own mission to sort things out. Now if that was all there was to the novel, it would still be an entertaining read. But in three codas to the book, John Scalzi explores further the consequences of a group of fictional characters becoming real. These fictional explorations of the nature of fiction, characters, life and love, turn a comic novel into a science fiction classic. One that deserves to be read far more widely than those who love Star Trek.

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Thomas Harris - Silence of the Lambs

Over a quarter of a century after it was first published, and despite repeated re-readings, Silence of the Lambs still has the power to grip and shock. Its not simply that the character of Hannibal Lecter is so horrible, its the way the author interweaves multiple story-lines into each other. Lecter is horrific of course, but he is also fascinating and Harris' portrayal of what shaped him gives a solid foundation to the serial killer. Two other characters stand out. Clarice Starling of course, brilliantly portrayed in the film, but here far more naive than Jodie Foster's character. Jack Crawford is also superbly drawn, personifying the FBI, not afraid to use Starling to the advantage of the FBI, but also tortured by his own personal situation. Reams of paper have been written about this book. There's little purpose to writing more - it is one of the greatest novels ever written about a serial killer. Horrific at times, painful even, but with unexpected depths. Worth the read.

David W. Anthony - The Horse, The Wheel and Language

David W. Anthony has produced an important, stimulating and very detailed book. It is likely, for those interested in the origins of language and the archaeology of early communities in eastern Europe, to be a standard work for many years to come.

Anthony begins by looking at where language comes from, and how languages change. By knowing a language at a particularly point in history, we can trace it backwards, recreating its predecessors, and in turn, using this discovered language to find further insights to its ancient speakers.

Some linguists remain skeptical, arguing that there are too many generalisations and too many unanswered questions. But Anthony makes a very strong case that we can, and have, reconstructed key parts of the Proto Indo European (PIE) language that is the far predecessor of most of the key European and Asian languages that exist today. "If we cannot regard reconstructed Proto-Indo-European as literally 'real', it is at least a close approximation of a prehistoric reality."

Since PIE was never written down, we can never know for sure. But one test is that work on PIE has lead to the reconstruction of further words in languages that developed from it. These have since been confirmed by archaeological evidence.

The discussion on language is merely the introduction to a much larger work. Having constructed PIE, the author then discusses the people who spoke it. How and where they lived. We can tell from the language something about them, they had cattle, sheep, pigs and most importantly horses. They lived in an area were the wildlife included otters, beaver, wolf and bees.

The biggest clue appears to be the words in PIE for wheeled vehicles and their component parts. Archaeology gives us accurate dates for the development of the wheel which mean that "late Proto-Indo-European was spoken after about 4000-3500 BCE", so PIE spread outwards into Europe into a landscape densely populated by people speaking "hundreds" of different languages, most of them farming.

Once Anthony has narrowed down the geographic area of the PIE speakers (which is roughly that of the Eurasian Steppes, north of the Black Sea) much of the remainder of the book is a detailed explanation of what we know about the various communities. These is heavily archaeological and in places becomes reduced to lists of the contents of various burial sites in such detail that the wider historical story is obscured somewhat. The non-specialist such as myself may find this confusing, but we can be distracted by the many maps, photographs and line drawings of graves and grave-goods.

Having said that, the book is worth sticking with. Some of the sections are real gems. I was particularly taken by the chapter that details the archaeology of ancient horses. The author has spent years studying the effects of bits upon horse teeth. With this knowledge he can try to say from animals remains which communities had domesticated the horse for riding (or use in chariots) and which hunted the animal for food. I was also taken by the description of the nomadic communities of wagon based pastrolists, whose economies involved groups of people who farmed and mined metal ores, as well as those moving about the steppes herding animals.

In places this book isn't an easy read. There is overwhelming detail in places, and this sometimes obscures the bigger picture. It will be an excellent resource for students of archaeology, and not just those interested in Eastern Europe. For the layman, there are plenty of fascinating nuggets and a general approach to history, language and archaeology that is well worth reading.

AW Zurbrugg - Not Our War: Writings Against the First World War

This fascinating collection of writings and speeches is the perfect antidote to those that want to downplay the anti-war feelings that existed during World War One. It is also an excellent resource for those studying the anti-war movements, the socialist and anarchist opposition and the developing rebellions and revolutions against the slaughter. In making this material available, Merlin Press have down us all an immense favour. The editors commentary is also very useful, providing background and sources for further study.

Much of the book is taken up by extracts of speeches and writings. Some of these, like Rosa Luxemburg's Junius Pamphlet will be familiar. Others, like the words of Scottish socialist John Maclean or various European Anarchists and pacifists will be less well known. Some of the material is translated and published in English for the first time. All of them are interesting, some because they demonstrate the clarity of thought amongst those who opposed the imperial war and others because they illuminate the hopes and fears of the ruling class. Here's an extract from a South African newspaper, fearing what would happen to colonial troops if they were used against Germany,

"If the Indians are used against the Germans it means they will return to India disabused of the respect they should bear for the white race. The Empire must uphold the principle that a coloured man must not raise his hand against a white man if there is to be any law or order in either India, Africa or any part of the Empire... it will mean the natives will secure pictures of whites being chased by coloured men and who knows what harm such pictures may do?"

or words from the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau:

"I would prefer that ten Blacks are killed rather than one Frenchman - although I immensely respect those brave blacks, but I think that enough Frenchmen are killed anyway and that we should sacrifice as few as possible."

Many of the extracts deal with those revolutionaries, socialist and anarchist trying to understand why the majority of the left movements ended up supporting their own ruling class, despite the enormous desire amongst working people before war broke out for peace. Frank Bohn, an American socialist gets to the heart of the problem when he declared

"With a vast majority it has been a matter of salary, of the commonest sort of economic determinism... This whole crowd began life as poor, hopeless lawyers or school teachers... who would no more think of losing their position in life than they would of going into the streets naked."

He continues that within the Germany socialist party, there were (of 900,000 members),

"perhaps one hundred thousand [who] were really socialists. If these had stood alone, with a press and a leadership devoted to revolutionary ideals, there would have been no war."

But revolts and opposition grew and the best part of this collection are the speeches of those who organised and built that opposition. In Russia, the working class overthrew its governments and monarchy and created the first workers' state. In Germany revolution and mutiny brought down the Kaiser and put an end to war. Elsewhere, in Glasgow, Sheffield, Dublin and a myriad of other places, the struggle reached new heights. Sadly, they didn't break through to victory, but those taking part recognised, as James Connolly did that,

"The carnival of murder on the continent will be remembered as a nightmare in the future, will not have the slightest effect in deciding for good the fate of our homes, our wages our hours, our conditions. But the victories of labour in Ireland will be as footholds, secure and firm in the upward climb of our class to the fullness and enjoyment of all that labour creates, and organised society can provide. Truly, labour alone in these days is fighting the real war for civilisation."

Related Reviews

Sherry - John Maclean: Red Clydesider

Rodney Hilton - Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381

In his introduction to this classic historical work, Rodney Hilton makes the point that a precondition of the existence of peasantry "as a class of small-scale agricultural producers has always been the existence of other classes... who live off the surplus produce of peasant labour." Inevitably then, class struggle, and peasant revolts have been a key part of the history of the peasantry. Looking at Medieval Europe, a were there was a "basic similarity of social structure in the rural communities, Hilton sees some broad patterns of revolt, much of which is determined by the particular nature of the exploitation of serfs. As Hilton points out:

"The earliest elements in peasant protest were the direct consequence of the peasants' attempts to devote as much as possible of the family's labour to the cultivation of the holding, and to keep for the disposal of the family as much as possible of the product of that labour."

In other words, peasants struggled to maximise their share of the product of their own labour, and to try and avoid obligations to the lords beyond the absolutely necessity. However what is striking about the wider peasant movements discussed here, both in England and Europe, is the way that often peasants raised wider demands which challenged the nature of the feudal system.

To see this most clearly, Hilton examines in detail the events of the Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381. The roots of this revolt, as discussed elsewhere, are complex. One key factor was the growing tendency for those in rural communities to demand increased wages, as a result of labour shortages following the decimation of the Black Death. This was recognised by the authorities who attempted, through various legislation, to limit wage rises and punish those calling for more. Hilton concludes that "it was serfdom and those things which flowed from the rights of lords over tenants which bulked largest in [peasant] grievances."

When the 1381 rising exploded, whole areas were quickly taken over by ordinary peasants. Hilton argues that the revolt wasn't simply that of peasants, but was a "cross section" of rural society, involving relative numbers of all parts of society. The peasants, well off and poor, were united as a class, and there is a remarkable similarity in what took place in numerous different villages and towns across England. Records that listed peasant obligations and taxes were usually the first targets, as were often those local landowners, abbots and other members of the governing classes who were particularly seen as enemies of the people. The rising was violent, but that reflects the violent nature of serfdom. The revolt though, seen through the demands of the peasants themselves in negotiation with the King was very much a revolt against serfdom as a system. The peasants demanded better access to the Commons, improved rights to hunt and use open land, but much more too.

Hilton contrasts the demands of Wat Tyler and the Peasants Revolt with those of Piers Plowman in Langland's famous work. According to Hilton, Pier's wants to maintain the status quo, but with better commitments from the ruling classes:

"I'll sweat and toil for us both as long as I live, and gladly do any job you want. But you must promise in return to guard over holy church and protect me from the thieves and wasters who ruin the world."

John Ball, the priest of the rebellion, however demanded far more revolution than these reformist demands.

"matters goeth not well to pass in England nor shall do till everything be common and that there be no villeins nor gentlemen but that we may be all united together and that the lords be no greater masters than we be."

One contemporary report says that Ball goes on to demand a transformed world. To obtain equality and justice required

"killing the great lords of the realm, then slaying the lawyers, justices and jurors... so at last they would obtain peace and security, if, when the great ones had been removed, they maintained among themselves equality of liberty and nobility as well as of dignity and power."

That's not to say the rebels didn't want immediate gains too, as well as a "world turned upside down". But the demand for freedom from serfdom "was the one most persistently presented when the rebels were directly negotiating with the king and his advisers."

That said, Hilton concludes that the peasantry was not a force in medieval Europe that could destroy the landed aristocracy. The force developing that could (and would), was the bourgeoisie. Hilton continues that "the leading social force in medieval peasant movements, even the most radical, seems to have been those elements most in contact with the market, those who in suitable circumstances would become capitalist farmers."

It is no surprise that Hilton's book seems to be one of the most referenced and quoted books in other works on the Peasant's Revolt of 1381. It is an excellent resource, carefully argued and backed by scrupulous research and evidence. It is a must for anyone trying to understand the transition from feudalism to capitalism and the social clashes that took place in the medieval era.

Related Reviews

Lindsay and Groves - The Peasant's Revolt 1381
O'Brien - When Adam Delved and Eve Span
Mortimer - The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

Dick Gregory - N*****

Until I picked up this old autobiography, I knew nothing abut Dick Gregory. Today he is relatively well known in the United States for his comedy, his social activism and his long record. Gregory's autobiography, written with the US sports journalist Robert Lipsyte, is an insightful look at the life of someone growing up black in 1950s America, and the early years of the Civil Rights moment.

The book is poignant. At times Gregory's descriptions of his childhood, the family's poverty and his mother's desparate hard work to try and keep the family alive will bring tears to your eyes. But Gregory also describes the sheer normality of vicious racism that went along with this. As a young man, Gregory was an accomplished runner. Such is the reality of racism in the US in that period, that it is actually atheletics that brings him into contact with the Civil Rights movement. He is angered that his running record isn't recorded in the local newspaper, because it was a race for blacks. He joins a protest march, and quickly becomes a key figure.

In the army, Gregory learns that he is an accomplished comedian. Youtube has a few of his early stand-up routines, sand 50 years later they sometimes still work. In his biography he describes how he combined an act that didn't ignore racism, at the same time as learning how to deal with it. Gregory's early efforts in showbiz cost him money and friends, but he does eventually break through. With fame though, comes responsibility, and as a prominant black figure, he eventually gets pulled into the Civil Rights movement as a leading figure. Despite being followed by the media everywhere, the police still brutally beat him (away from the cameras) and Gregory gets pulled further into activism.

For those who've read about the Civil Rights movement, Gregory's slightly oblique look at the struggle will be fascinating. He's not really a leading figure, though a key part of it. But he describes the March on Washington, and the murder of school girls in Alabama with passion - these are not remote incidents, but ones that he sees pulling more people into the struggle. Gregory has his own tragedies. Since this is autobiography, at times he over-emphasises his own importance, but mostly he inspires because he is honest - about his fears, about his guilt and about why he gets motivated. At the end of the book Gregory writes with hope:

You didn't die a slave for nothing, Momma. You brought us up. You and all those Negro mothers who gave their kids the strength to go on, to take that thimble to the well while the whites were taking buckets. Those of us who weren't destroyed got stronger, got calluses on our souls. And now we're ready to change a system, a system where a white man can destroy a black man with a single word. N*****.

Sadly, we still have a long way to go. But people like Gregory were a key part of starting the Civil Rights movement. He remains active today, and his story should continue to inspire a new generation. 

Dave Sherry - John Maclean: Red Clydesider

The UK's commemoration of the centenary of the start of World War One has so far mostly focused on the same old tired stereotypes of a country united behind the flag. This short book by Scottish socialist Dave Sherry however tells a very different story. It looks at the life of one of the most important revolutionary socialists of the early 20th century, and through his story demonstrates that there was often a very different mood amongst workers during World War One.

John Maclean is almost forgotten today. He died, tragically young, at 44. His life undoubtably shortened by the prison sentences for seditious behaviour. Maclean was not one to deny the charge. Facing five years hard labour in May 1918, in one of his most famous speeches from the prison dock, Maclean famously declared:

"I am not here as the accused - I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot... in 15 years time from the close of this war we are into the next war - if capitalism lasts we cannot escape it. My appeal is to the working class. I appeal exclusively to them because they, and they alone can bring about the time when the whole world will be in one brotherhood, on a sound economic foundation... That can only be obtained when the people of the world get the world and retain the world."

Maclean was a threat to the British establishment because he was one of the acknowledged leaders of some of the country's most powerful workers. Those employed in the enormous factories of Glasgow adopted Maclean as one of their own. A school-teacher until he was sacked for his anti-war agitation, Glasgow's workers organised a levy to ensure that he could be paid to continue organising.

Dave Sherry illustrates how, cut off from the continental revolutionary movement by the war, Maclean was able to develop a clear internationalist understanding of the conflict. Sherry points out that "like Lenin", Maclean saw the conflict as "a struggle between the great powers for land and markets." In Maclean's words,

"Plunderers versus plunderers with the workers as pawns. It is out business as socialists to develop class patriotism, refusing to murder one another for a sordid world capitalism."

However Sherry also explains, that despite Maclean's brilliance, and the loyalty he had from thousands of workers, he lacked the political organisation that Lenin had. At various times the class struggle in Glasgow ebbed and flowed during the war. At certain times the movement reached near revolutionary peaks, but the government, through repression and the use of the union bureaucracy were able to damp down the militancy.

Maclean on trial in 1918

Though Maclean understood that the movement needed to link political and economic struggles, too often the unions were able to divert the strikes down sectional paths. This was not to deny though the significance of the struggle. Both during the war, when Glasgow ignited mass strike waves that spread through British factories, and afterwards when during 1919 Glasgow was in such upheaval that tanks and warships were deployed to prevent revolution. The sections of this book that give a taste of these struggles are nothing short of inspiring.

This weakness of Maclean's; his lack of an understanding of the need to build political organisation was bought into sharp relief when he refused to join the fledgling British Communist Party. Sherry argues that this was very much to with he hostility to some individuals who did join, rather than an inherent (and early) belief in the need for Scottish independence. Maclean was a revolutionary internationalist, who's life work was dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism. At a time when the Scottish are discussing the future of the union, Maclean's belief in the revolutionary potential of ordinary workers has never been so important. As Dave Sherry concludes in his new introduction, "the break up of the UK would be a small victory for the world working class and, as John Maclean argued 90 years ago, that is something to fight for."

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Philip Lindsay & Reg Groves - The Peasants' Revolt 1381

The cowardly murder of Wat Tyler 15 June 1381

Philip Lindsay and Reg Groves' 1950 history of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt is a classic of narrative history. Their story is filled with the words of the ordinary people who rebelled against serfdom, injustice, poverty and for a better world. Their words continue to inspire today. Here for instance, is part of the "hedge priest" John Ball's speech on June 13, 1381 at Blackheath on the edge of London, as 30,000 rebels gathered ready to capture the city.

"Now to Englishmen is the opportunity given, if they choose to take it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom they have always wanted. Wherefore, let us take good courage and behave like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his barn but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good grain. Now the tares of England are her oppressive rulers and the time of harvest has come."
Unlike many historians, Lindsay and Groves see the Peasants' Revolt as being a highly organised, planned insurrection. Despite a lack of evidence, the authors argue, persuasively, that without significant networks, the rebels could not have achieved what they did. They cite, for instance, the rhyming letters sent out by John Ball, which suggest a prearranged plan, and of course, letters sent, must have a destination - perhaps individuals known and trusted in advance.

However organised the rebels were, they certainly had grievances. The over-view of life in Medieval England is one of backbreaking work, vicious exploitation, poverty and hunger. At the same time though, some in England did very well, not least the church, which took a tenth of everyone's possessions. This is no doubt why, the radical preachings of priests like John Ball could get such a hearing. But it was also the experience of many peasants that the church was at the heart of their oppression. The population of St. Albans rose in rebellion on many occasions, 1381 being merely the latest and greatest. They ensured that the Abbot gave back the lands his monastery had stolen, restored the peasants rights to fish and hunt game, even as they threw down hedges and fences. In most villages touched by the rebellion, records of legal decisions and papers that formed the basis for serfdom were also burnt. Lindsay and Groves write

"From the earliest days of the rising, the commoners had declared themselves for 'King Richard and the True Commons'. They swore to this oath of allegiance and they made all whom they met swear to it. In this simple, plain statement is the full purpose of the revolt, for it carried with it a complete destruction of the existing feudal order."

These were "Zealots for truth and justice, not thieves and robbers". In his second meeting with King Richard, the leader of the revolt, Wat Tyler, made the rebels' demands even clearer, all "warrens, as well as fisheries as in parks and woods, should be common to all; so that throughout the realm, in the waters, ponds, fisheries, woods and forests, poor as well as rich might take venison, and hunt the hare in the fields."

He also demanded the end of the bishoprics, save one, and the beheading of the traitorous advisers to Richard. The rebels believed that Richard was surrounded by corrupt ministers, and envisaged a future were serfdom was abolished, with local county government, ruled over by a king selected by the people themselves.

Sadly the rebels' misunderstood the unity of the ruling class. The cowardly murder of Tyler was only the beginning of a counter-revolution that was to lead to thousands of deaths across the country as the feudal order reasserted itself. "Serfs you were and serfs you will be" declared Richard. But many refused to give up without a fight. Leader Grindcobbe said at St. Albans, facing certain death declared:

"Fellow citizens, whom now a scanty liberty has relieved from long oppression, stand while you can stand, and fear nothing for my punishment since I would die in the cause of the liberty we have gained, if it is now my fate to die, thinking myself happy to be able to finish my life by such a martyrdom."
The defeat of the Peasants' Revolt and the torture and murder of most of its leaders however did not end rebellion. Feudalism did appear to continue, but the Revolt was only one of a long line of rebellions, local and national. Within fifty years, the Serfs had "more or less" won their freedom, but perhaps the greatest legacy of the Peasants' Revolt is twofold. The ruling class never again forgot the threat they faced from ordinary people organising, and the stories, poems and speeches of John Ball, Wat Tyler and the others inspired future generations.


Related Reviews

O'Brien - When Adam Delved and Eve Span

Peter Linebaugh - Stop, Thief! The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance

Peter Linebaugh has been one of those historians who over the last few decades has rescued the history of some of the most marginalised and forgotten people. In particular he has looked at those who were side-lined or lost their livelihoods (not to mention lives) in the earliest days of capitalism. In this volume of essays, Linebaugh examines the way that as capitalism developed, there was an associated transformation in the way that the majority of the population could live and work on the land. In particular, this 
frequently meant the destruction of common rights, the enclosure of common land and the creation of new laws to criminalise old activities. Linebaugh notes, for instance, that alongside enclosure (the "historical antonym and nemesis of the commons") there was a "massive prison construction program".

That capitalism destroys old customs to improve the ability of a small group of individuals to better make themselves wealthy should be no surprise. Linebaugh quotes no less a figure that J.S.Mill, "a world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature with every foot of land brought into cultivation... and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow." to aptly capture those who thought that nature would be utilised in the interest of society, controlled, shaped and driven in the interest of commerce and social improvement.

But the rights that people had. To collect fallen wood, or hunt rabbits, or glean the fields after harvest, were not granted from on high. They had been fought for an won by generations of peasants. Their removal thus was brutal. But it was also resisted. From Wat Tyler, to the "Luddites", Peasant Revolts and the Iroquois, people resisted losing their lands and rights. It was a losing battle, but it was a struggle that helped shaped a vision of a different world, as well as opening eyes to the nature of the system.

Two chapters in this collection deal with those who learnt from these struggles and envisaged a world with a new "commune". One is on Marx, whose early radical journalism was in part a reaction to his anger at new laws that criminalised the right of peasants to collect wood. The second is on the socialist William Morris, whose writings are sometimes dismissed as overly romantic socialism, harking back to a time that never existed. But Linebaugh however, in a essay that serves as an introduction to E.P. Thompson's biography of Morris, sees Morris as a socialist who saw the world, not as an abstract nature, but one that should be used and enjoyed for the benefit of all. He quotes Morris,

"The Communist asserts in the first place that the resources of nature, mainly the land and those other things which can only be used for the reproduction of wealth and which are the effect of social work, should not be own in severalty, but by the whole community for the benefit of the whole."

Morris' activism, his tireless speaking tours and writing thus become an extension of this vision. Not an abstract dream, but an object to struggle for.

On occasion, Linebaugh comes close to romanticizing the past himself. But he understands that the struggle to protect the Commons was that of the poorest fighting for what little they had. That struggle was brutal, but so were their lives. He recounts the story of a "Mr. Samuels" who "lost his hand to a mechanical coconut shredder" and so his friends and fellow villagers burnt the "pumping station" in revenge.

Linebaugh sees such struggles as in a continuum with today's battles to prevent further erosion of our rights. For this author, the struggle for a new commons, is as important as the fight to protect what we have and had.

Peter Linebaugh's writing is filled with passion, forgotten histories, and literary quotes. Here are Shelley and Wordsworth, Frankenstein's monster and the words of miners, peasants and all those men and women who've struggled at the bottom of the society.

Related Reviews

Linebaugh - The Magna Carta Manifesto
Linebaugh - The London Hanged
Linebaugh & Rediker - The Many Headed Hydra

Alex Callinicos - Making History: Agency, Structure and Change in Social Theory

At the outset, I should say that this is a challenging book. It deals with debates and polemics within the academic world of social theory that most casual readers will not be aware of. As such, even for those of us who have read a good deal of Marxist theory, it can be in places inaccessible.

That said, for those who persevere there is a great deal within this book that repays those who do read it. In particular, the trenchant and clear defence of Marxist approaches to history, historical change and the role of workers in making revolution are very important.

Callinicos begins with an overview of various social theorists, and their roots in wider philosophical writings. While some of these thinkers may be unknown to the reader, others, like Foucault are oft-quoted and rarely understood. Callinicos does an excellent job in drawing out their ideas and examining them through the Marxist lens. One of the core parts to this section, is the debate on "human nature". Callinicos puts it thus:

"Central to Marx's account of human labour is its redirective character, namely the fact that human beings' ability to consciously to reflect on their activity allows them to modify and improve on prevailing productive techniques. Rather than being tied to the fixed repertoire of behaviour characteristic of other species, human productive activity is distinguished by its flexibility, by the indefinite variety of ways in which human beings may meet their needs by virtue of their cognitive capacities."

Here we have a got example of Callinicos' approach in the book. Rather than looking for fixed points of human behaviour, he sees a dynamically changing world where humans interact with each other, and with nature to create the world they inhabit. The historically changing social world is itself a reflection of wider forces:

"To specify the character of a mode of production is to give an account of the specific combination of the forces and relations of production it involves."

This simple enough sounding statement has produced an enormous amount of literature and debate. Callinicos examines the varying understandings of these in detail, challenging both the work of academics like G.A Cohen, but also the writings of revolutionary socialists like Chris Harman. Students of historical materialism, as a concept, will find these sections invaluable.

The process of change between "modes of production" is a second theme for Callinicos. He points out that "instead of exploring the differentia specifica of particular modes of production, analytical Marxists tend to focus on what they see as Marx's views of the universal mechanisms of historical change." However, such universals do not necessarily exist. For instance, the roles of (say) the bourgeoisie during bourgeois revolutions is very different from that of workers in proletarian revolutions. Callinicos points out that that the former are not self-conscious actors, but come to the forefront through a process of "molecular" change and frequently a "compromise" with the old order.

The final section of the book deals with the role of "agents" in historical change. It thus looks at debates that consider whether individuals have a collective interest in change, through, the "prisoner's dilemma" and whether social revolution is "rational" from the point of view of individual workers. It is in this section that Callinicos' is very clear. This is not least, because the author is linked to a network of organised socialists trying to create change. Refreshingly, the book's defence of the need for working class revolution, breaks with the academic debates that Callinicos has ably intervened in. Philosopher's have merely tried to understand the world, the point is, of course, to change it.

Related Reviews

Callinicos and Simons - The Great Strike
Perry - Marxism and History
Harman - Marxism and History
Hughes - Ecology and Historical Materialism
Carr - What is History?

James Heartfield - Unpatriotic History of the Second World War

2014 is the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. It is also the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War. Unlike the First World War the Second seems to have produced a constant stream of books. Much of this has discussed the war in the context of the "Good Fight" against Fascism, and for Democracy. But in recent years there have been a number of excellent histories that re-examine the war in a more critical light.

James Heartfield's Unpatriotic History is good example of this, and should be read alongside Donny Gluckstein's People's History of the Second World War. Together they comprehensibly demolish the mainstream, "victor's history".

Heartfield begins by noting that the question of labour is central to the war. The winners were those "who best mobilised their domestic workers and so best equipped their armies". The impact on the working class of this "was that more of them worked much harder, and got paid less." Consequently the war transformed the industrial landscape. "Plant created in Detroit and Dagenham, the Urals and Silesia... would lay the basis for the post war boom".

The working class was also transformed. "Between 1942 and 1945 the number of black Americans in work tripled....  One million six hundred thousand, black and white moved north." Similarly, as in the First World War, the position of women was transformed. Two million more British women were put to work. Doing this meant a transformation of the economies. State capitalism became the norm, "the free market was abandoned in order to achieve maximum efficiency in reorganizing trade".

What was the cause of the war though? It certainly wasn't a struggle for democracy, or a fight to end fascism. This was an imperialist conflict, whatever cause the politicians expounded. Churchill and Roosevelt talked of democracy, but their interests were much more base. As an American slogan put it in the pre-war period, "If goods can't cross borders, soldier's will". Indeed, western economic policies helped push Germany into conflict. Heartfield quotes economic historian Adam Tooze, "Given the isolation imposed on the European continent by the Britsh blockade only the Ukraine could provide Western Europe with the millions of tons of grain it needed to sustain its animal population".

This is not to let German Imperialism off the hook. Hitler had come to power with the backing of big business - it needed access to raw materials, markets and the rest of the world. Japan too was heavily dependent on imports and was looking for expansion. It was the British Empire and US interests that this threatened and thus war became increasingly likely. As Heartfield puts it, "the struggle over Empire was the cause of the Second World War. Those countries that tried to enlarge their empires clashed with those who were trying to defend their own."

The economic interests of big business meant that initially, some of Hitler's policies were considered fairly acceptable. As The Economist wrote in 1941;

"The extent...to which the Nazi's have found willing collaborators is not altogether surprising. Industrialists have, of course, been driven into collaboration by the need for raw materials, but there is no doubt that many of them would have been ready for it without this compulsion."

Those who governed in the West of course frequently flirted with Nazis. Churchill for instance, noted the ability of the Fascist regimes to be a bulwark against Communism. Heartfield argues that it was only when his government's imperialist interest was threatened that Churchill was prepared to go to war. The British government was also frequently unmoved by the plight of the Jews


"The whole problem of the Jews in Europe is very difficult and we should move cautiously about offering to take all Jews out of a country like Bulgaria. If we do that then all the Jews of the world will want us to take up similar offers in Poland and Germany. Hitler will take us up on such an offer...", worried Anthony Eden in March 1943 at a meeting of the British Foreign Office discussing the threat of extermination of Bulgarian Jews by the Nazis.

Sometimes I feel Heartfield overstates the case. For instance he suggests that the Second Front in Europe was only launched because Churchill and Roosevelt became worried about the potential for workers uprisings against a crumbling Nazi occupation. I'm not sure this is strictly true. By 1944 I think they were more worried about their position in a post war Europe dominated by the Red Army. Nonetheless, the resistance was significant. But it wasn't always against the Fascists. Heartfield rescues the forgotten histories of those, particularly in South East Asia, who had to fight British and US armies of occupation before, during and after the War.

Some of the most fascinating chapters (as in Gluckstein's book) are those that deal with these forgotten aspects to World War Two. History books focus our minds on Europe and Japan. Less often do we hear about Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and India. Nor do we hear about the brutalities of the Allies. Victor's justice means we known about the Rape of Nanking, or the Holocaust. We don't get to hear why it was that the US army rarely took Japanese POWs. (They had a no-prisoners policy) or discuss the mass bombing of German civilians.


While the book is very good, it is not without fault. I feel bound to mention that the publishers have failed in their duty to ensure the book was properly proofread... it is littered with typos, and inconsistencies in style. In addition there are a number of glaring errors; B52s were certainly not used to bomb Tokyo - that particular war-crime was committed with B29s. More surprisingly for an author in command of a wide range of sources, the author of The Tin Drum was Gunter Grass, not Heinrich Böll. This is a shame, because the editorial failings detract from an excellent book that challenges many of the most cherished myths of the Second World War.

Related Reviews

Gluckstein - A People's History of the Second World War
Calder - A People's War
Calder - The Myth of the Blitz
Challinor - The Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Essays on the Second World War
Newsinger - Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire

Steven Rose - The 21st-Century Brain

How does the peculiar lump of grey matter in our head think? How does it store memories? How does it enable us to breathe and swallow, to hold things, to flinch from pain? Is our brain the same as that of a monkey? Can single celled animals learn?

All these fascinating questions are addressed by Steven Rose's enormously enjoyable 21st Century Brain. Where possible he answers in a style that mixes detailed science with accessible writing. Where we don't know, Rose tells us how close we are to finding out, but most importantly he tells us how science got to where we are today. He also is quick to point out the problems with much of the historical research into the brain, and were problems remain today.

For the dialectical scientist, the brain is not simply an unchanging lump of matter. Rose is keen to emphasize that the brain, and its functionality, is part of an evolving, changing structure that has a history. This history has shaped the physical structure of the brain, but it has also shaped how individual humans think, remember and learn. Key to this is of course evolution, and in some of the most fascinating science writing I have ever read, Rose traces the likely evolutionary development that takes us from the soup of chemicals on the very early earth, through small cellular animals and to today's complex animal brains. Studying human brains "reveals their ancestry. Their basic biochemistry was essentially fixed at the dawn of evolutionary time, with the emergence of cells." Though obviously the has been enormous evolutionary development since then.

But there is a further history, the brain doesn't arrive full-formed in a new-born baby. It develops and grows, and this process is almost as fascinating and the breathtaking story of evolution. Importantly, for Rose, "nothing in biology makes sense except in the lights of its own history." The brain itself is a "marvellous product and process, the result of aeons of evolution and for each human adult decades of development." This idea of the brain as a process is a particularly important one for Rose, who sees its working as ever-changing, developing and growing, rather than a static, fixed set of structures and material.

We might think that the brain is a collection of specialist areas. With a bit that deals with seeing, a part that controls walking, and another for memory. While this is how the brain was often thought of historically, scientific evidence doesn't bear this out. As Rose says,

"One must consider the workings of the brain not merely in terms of three dimensional spatial anatomical connectivity but in the time dimension as well. Cells that fire together bind together. Once again, the message is that brain processes depend on history as well as geography".

The book deals with the development of the brain, but also its ageing process, including disease and death. The final chapters of the book look at attempts to deal with disease or memory lose. But Rose challenges those who simply see these problems as simply ones of chemistry, looking for the perfect drug or fix. Reductionist medicine, as he calls it, that "seek the explanations of many of our troubles in the presence in our brain of such malfunctioning molecules". Such medical procedures also lead to a situation where, US researchers are apparently trying to understand the neural processes involved in choosing between Coke and Pepsi.

This contrasts with Rose's understanding;

"Evolutionary history explains how we got to have the brains we posses today. Developmental history explains how individual persons emerge; social and cultural history provide the context which constrains and shapes that development; and individual life history shaped by culture, society and technology terminates in age and ultimately death."

Rose's book is a fascinating one. He wears his politics clear, raging at those that look for genes or patterns in the brain that suggest individuals are prone to violence, or crime, but don't consider those who drop bombs on Iraq as behaving wrongly.

But it is also Rose's politics that help shape his vision of the dialectic between humans, biology and society. Indeed his book finishes on a hopeful note, precisely because his vision of medical science is not one constrained by finding the correct pill or drug, but sees our biology as part of something much wider.

Related Reviews

Levins & Lewontin - The Dialectical Biologist

Robin Blackburn - The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights

Robin Blackburn's book The American Crucible is a brilliantly accessible account of the rise and fall of New World slavery. It is engaging, polemical and Blackburn is not afraid of taking on those historians he disagrees with, and who disagree with him. In doing so, the reader will learn much about contemporary debates about the historic role of slavery. Most importantly though, what becomes clear is how slavery was ended.

Blackburn begins by looking at the development of the slave economy. Slavery began with European indentured servants and attempts to enslave the indigenous people of the Americas. But in Barbados for instance, as early as 1650, African slaves outnumbered white-indentured servants. There were differences but also continuity between the slave two systems, separated by what Blackburn calls the plantation revolution. Once established slave plantations rapidly became enormously profitable. As Blackburn notes:

"The British and French slave plantations thrived. The planters of Barbados, Jamaica and Virginia, or of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint-Doimingue, began to produce tens of thousands of tons of sugar and millions of pounds of tobacco, responding to the new mass markets for exotic produce in north-west Europe. By 1670 the small island of Barbados was producing as much sugar as Brazil."

From the beginning, slavery was marked by vicious cruelty. Slaves on plantations died from the enormous workloads, but the planters chose to simply replace the slaves, rather than reduce the work. Violence, beatings, executions and rape were common place.

As noted above, slavery began to be enormously profitable in the Americas as the commodities it produced were suddenly in great demand in Europe. This means that a "distinctively capitalist combination of commodity production and free wage-labour in parts of north-western Europe had set the scene for something very different on the other side of the Atlantic."

Associated with the rise of slavery was a new racial order. Blackburn documents the way that racial categories were created to justify the system, as well as enabling the divide and rule that kept it going. In the English colonies, Blackburn describes these racial relations emerging in a "relatively unplanned way". But;

"When planters and their fellow white colonists adopted the rule that the children of slave mothers would themselves be slaves, they were following Iberian practice and Roman Law... The English colonial practice of the 'one drop rule' - anyone with any African ancestry was 'black' - was distinctive. The various colonial assemblies quickly adopted repressive and racialized slave legislation... Charles Mills has written of a 'racial contract' shaping the colonial social order. This was, of course, a contract within the white population. While the leading men had the main say in such regulation, the poorer whites were given a stake in a racial order which reserved the hardest toil for 'blacks'."

While capitalism and the consequent consumer appetities helped create and drive the plantation economy, the slave economy wasn't itself purely capitalist. Blackburn suggests that "Planters were not fully capitalist agents, since they only employed a small number of paid workers. Nevertheless they contributed to an expanded regime of capitalist accumulation."

While the trade was dynamic between (say) Britain and the New World, it also helped lock the slave economy in place, despite its economic limitations. Blackburn concludes that "the colonial authorities created conditions favorable to a supply of slaves, rather than to one with free labourers. This counterfactual was doomed by the lack of imagination and class blinkers of 17th century elites, not... the eternal impossibility of organising sugar cultivation without slave labour."

How did slavery end? Blackburn defends those who argue that the role of slave rebellions was key. In particularly he argues the successful slave revolt in Haiti was instrumental in this process. In part this was because of the slaves' bravery and resolution. More important was the way that revolts like that in Haiti inspired and inflamed anti-slavery movements in Europe and North America. In 1793-4 the "sans-culottes were cheering slave emancipation in Paris, and, at a Sheffield meeting called to support a wider-franchise and the 'total and unqualified abolition of Negro slavery', thousands of metal workers endorsed freedom for the slaves in order to 'avenge peacefully ages of wrongs done to our Negro Brethren.'"

But the Haitian revolution also inspired African Americans to "reach" for freedom, and helped ensure that the new South American republics that achieved independence from Europe, were not based on slavery.

The final ending of New World slavery didn't simply come from slave rebellion, nor did it come because of well meaning abolitionists in Britain and North America. Both of these were important. Blackburn also argues that there was no purely economic reason to abolish slavery, which despite its limitations was still enormously profitable. There were growing outputs per slave as more "scientific" approaches to time management were used on the plantations though slavery was not as productive as other branches of the economy. Blackburn argues instead that "slavery turned out to be vulnerable in an environment dominated by the aspirations, anxities and strife of an advancing capitalism."

Capitalism required a particular idelogy of free-labour and early struggles for rights and democracy didn't sit well with the existence of the slave system. The mass rebellions and abolition movements fueled this as well. Blackburn continues:

"The class struggle of the early industrial epoch focused on the ability of the owners of an enterprise to dictate terms to their workers, as well as on the instability of the accumulation process. This standpoint could put in question the wide-spread idea - always a key prop of the slave system - that private property was sacred. Wage workers knew they were better off than chattel slaves, but they began to challenge the powers and privileges of capitalist employers, and yearned for the independence of owning a small farm or workshop.... In the wake of economic development there were artisans and craftsmen, wage workers and specialists, professionals and technicians who were moved to assert their status as independent citizens. They upheld the rights of labour and of humanity and saw the slave-holder as inimical to them."

This is not to downplay the struggles of the slaves or the work of the abolition movements, both of which Blackburn celebrates. But it is also to put the movements in the context of a changing world order, in which slavery no longer fitted with the ideological framework that was being used to keep workers in chains. This approach helps to illuminate both the way slavery developed and how it ended, whether through the laws passed by the British government, or the American Civil War together with revolution and other radical movements.

This review can only give a partial insight into Robin Blackburn's monumental work. It is a book that will set the standard for writing on the subject of slavery for years to come, and its deserves to be read widely. The author's style, clarity and choice of subject matter make this an excellent and accessible book for the non-specialist and it should be on the shelf of everyone who wants to understand slavery and the historic origins of racism and to be inspired by the fight against them.

Related Reviews

Rediker - The Amistrad Rebellion
Rediker - The Slave Ship
James - The Black Jacobins
Galeano - The Open Veins of Latin America

Interview with Robin Blackburn: What really ended slavery?

Steven Mithen - Thirst: Water & Power in the Ancient World

Steven Mithen is one of today's foremost popularisers of ancient history. Thirst is first and foremost a book about how ancient societies used and controlled water, but it clearly is influenced by wider contemporary questions of water and state power. As Mithen points out, two billion people today have inadequate sanitation, and by 2025 over half the world's nations are expected to face shortages of fresh water. So how can ancient history illuminate contemporary problems?

Firstly there is the obvious point, that access to water can be controlled. Those who control water can thus make others pay tribute in various ways. Indeed some historical studies have linked water very closely to state power. Karl Wittfogel's 1957 book Oriental Despotism argued that irrigation work could only have been done by large amounts of labour, and thus it must have needed a large centralised bureaucratic network.

For some societies this was undoubtably true. Mithen's book looks at the enormous aqueducts and water courses of the Roman Empire, the gigantic water courses and lakes of Angkor and South American civilisations such as the Maya and Inca to see how ancient states often did use water in this way. Water could be a tool to help control populations, but it also had a myriad of symbolic, religious or social uses too.

But Mithen argues very strongly that the existence of a political and bureucratic hierarchy is not a prerequisite for irrigation works. In fact, some of the most fascinating parts of this book, are ones that deal with the extensive water works and irrigation schemes of early farming communities. Frequently these are in places which are extremely arid today. Take for instance the Ubaid and early Uruk "pre-state" communities in the area now known as Iraq. These communities improved on natural features of existing water courses to irrigate their fields.

"Because of the natural braiding of the rivers, short off-shoot canals running for a few kilometres could be dug with minimal alteration of the water regime. The rivers were naturally elevated above the surrounding plain by the levees and hence by simply cutting an outlet through those banks, a sluice gate, water would flow into a channel by gravity. The water could then flow into a network of small channels surrounding the crops... with irrigation, the rich alluvial soils became highly productive and with greater reliability than those from the rain fed farming regions of Northern Mesopotamia."

While such works may not have needed centralised power, they would have required co-operation on a large scale, and archaeologists also suggest that in this case, according to translations of cuneiform texts, individuals that operated as "canal inspectors". Mithen doesn't point this out, but it is not difficult to imagine that such individuals could have ended up becoming the seeds of hieracrchical groups in society as their position in relation to a crucial resource gave them additional power within a community. Later when looking at Iraq's water history, Mithen notes the debates around salinity that may have contributed to the end of Sumerian civilisation. Interestingly he notes that pre-colonial farming was often better at dealing with salt than modern agriculture imposed during colonial times.

With more complex class societies, and more powerful states, water management was on much larger scales. Mithen describes some of the impressive water schemes. One Roman system brings water 551 kilometres to Constantinople. Such schemes led at least one Roman bureaucrat to consider his canals and aqueducts to be far more impressive than the "good for nothing tourist attractions of Greece".

Mithen avoids falling into the trap of arguing that we can simply impose experiences from 1000s of years ago onto contemporary societies. But while the outlook is gloomy, history has shown that we can use technological innovations to bring water to areas that need it.

The kings of Petra may have done this so that visitors experienced the shock of fountains in the middle of the desert, and heard the gurgling of water in underground pipes; today's rulers put golf courses in the centre of deserts to benefit the rich. Mithen notes that in the past, as with today, the wealthy section of the population were more likely to benefit from the technology and engineering solutions.

Steven Mithen's book is not without fault. On occasion I found some of his writing frivolous. To suggest that because the Maya rulers chose the "delicate" water-lily as their symbol it can "excuse the odd bit of rampant environmental degradation and gratuitous violence" is frankly silly. This aside, Mithen's book is an accessible introduction to questions of resource management, government and power in the ancient world that will help the reader to explore the rise of class societies and the nature of hierarchy in the past.

 Related Reviews

Mithen - After the Ice
Mithen - The Singing Neanderthals
Mithen - To the Islands
Fagan - Floods, Famines and Emperors

William Gibson & Bruce Sterling - The Difference Engine

Science fiction novels rarely retain their power after nearly a quarter of a century. Yet Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine remains a highly readable classic. Back in 1990 it set the standard for the Steampunk genre, and even today, it is hard to beat.

Set in an alternate universe where Babbage's mechanical computer, the Difference Engine, worked, the world has headed down a different trouserleg of time. Britain retains its world power status at the head of a large Empire. America has failed to unify itself, Britain being firm allies with the Confedarcy. North of America, Canada is replaced by a British protectorate. On the continent, France is a firm ally, and Ireland, following a policy of friendship and solidarity from the British government, that avoided the Great Famine, is a firm part of the Union.

Such differences feel real enough to make the novel work. But what really helps is the exciting story line, as London is engulfed in smog during the Great Stink, revolution breaks out. Neo-Luddites and the poor rise up, smashing symbols of government power, destroying machinary and driving out the rich. Sadly, the revolution is defeated by the novel's heroes, yet the uprising itself is vivdly portrayed, the characters carefully drawn with sympathy and solidarity.

Given the depth of its research, readers will be forgive for spending much of the novel trying to find in-jokes and parallels. I particularly liked the idea of Karl Marx leading a Commune in New York, while the richest man in England, Lord Engels, comments sympathetically from his industrial empire in Manchester. But the alternative time-line, with Lord Byron leading a popular revolution against the aristocracy, and Britain's global power centring on her mastery of technology for military and economic domination, is as much of a key part of the books' attraction.

Many people will have already read this classic novel. If you haven't and you are a fan of well written SF, give it a try.

Related Reviews

Harrison - A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!
Stephenson - Quicksilver

Lorenzo Fioramonti - How Numbers Rule the World: The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Global Politics

A 2012 report funded by the Irish Department of the Environment made the astonishing claim that earthworms contribute €723 million annually to the Irish agricultural economy. This figure demonstrates a central thesis of Lorenzo Fioramonti's fascinating new book - statistics can both illuminate and confuse. More importantly numbers can serve purposes far beyond their symbolic value.

Fioramonti argues that the tendency to use numbers to quantify, value and understand our wider social and natural environment, has "been used and abused in governance processes to entrench the power of markets and undermine public debate". The use of statistics doesn't simply reflect underlying economic systems, but actually furthers those interests. Fioramonti looks at how this happens in a number of areas. For instance, he discusses the flawed way that we measure economic well being - GDP. GDP reflects market transactions, but ignores whole areas of the economy - housework, pollution or natural resources.

He also shows how the use of statistics by those who want to rubbish global warming science has led in turn, to some scientists, being accused of misrepresenting their own data. Far more problematic though, are the attempts to mitigate climate change, by creating enormous emissions trading schemes that rely on the free market, yet fail to challenge the real causes of rising carbon emissions.

Take approaches to preventing environmental disaster. As I write this, the question of floods has been a major political issue in the UK. Government cuts to environmental defence measures have helped reduce the ability of whole areas to deal with heavy rainfall. Such cuts are irrational, some say, because for every £1 spent on flood defences, £8 will be saved.

This approach is not new. The 1936 US Flood Control Act introduced such cost-benefit analyses "by stating that no flood-control programme would receive federal funding unless it was proved that its benefits would exceed its costs." Such proofs might be hard to achieve and politicians that make their decisions based on such calculations can find themselves in knee-high water.

Nonetheless such sums might have value if they are done in the interest of society in general. But when those totting up the figures are themselves interested in making money, then the outcomes themselves can become distorted. Cost benefit analysis might have started out as a way of trying to make sure that "public infrastructure projects were transformed 'from a collection of local bureaucratic practices into a set of rationalised economic principles'." But it ended up meaning that

"practices of environmental audit, value for money audit, management audit, forensic audit, data audit, intellectual property audit...[etc]... acquired a degree of institutional stability and acceptance."

Nowhere is this clearer than in the behaviour of Credit Ratings Agencies. These are private bodies that make their profits by assigning a value to a company (or country's) credit. These ratings are of enormous importance to organisations, which naturally have a vested interest in improving them. This leads to dodgy dealings and dodgy figures (famously the CRAs considered Lehman Brothers a safe investment until the moment it went belly up).More worryingly it allows CRAs to have enormous power. The downgrading of the US credit rating in 2011, in the words of one CRA analyst

"reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policy making and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges".

In other words an unaccountable and unelected CRA was able to take a political position which in turn had enormous consequences. The downgrading of countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal caused misery for millions of people. It has also helped further the agenda of those who stand to gain from privatisation and the opening up of economies to the ravages of neo-liberalism.

It is extremely difficult to choose which parts of this fascinating book to discuss in this review. The chapters that deal with the commodisation of nature, and attempts to deal with pollution through the introduction of market mechanisms are notable in the way they expose the irrationality of these numerical approaches, but also the ineffectual nature of this sort of economic thinking.

Fioramonti says that "numbers do not possess any intrinsic normative value, their power is derived from the capacity to reduce complexity to a few observable facts." But he points out that when "numerical reasoning" is used to try and understand society, it produces all sorts of simplicities and confusions. In particular, "the complexity of social relations is lost through the cracks of mathematical algorithms".

The final section, which discusses how statistical analysis has distorted aid programmes and developmental work, shows this particularly clearly. Those charities, NGOs or philanthropists looking for simple casual situations, where money can be thrown at one thing to solve another, frequently find that the situation is far more complex. It also leads to quite warped thinking. I was particularly saddened by some economic gurus at MIT who asserted that "the stress of living on less than 99 cents per day encourages the poor to make questionable decisions that feed - not fight - poverty." In other words, it is the poor that causes poverty, rather than a system based on the rich getting richer at the expense of the majority.

Fioramonti's book is not an anti-capitalist manifesto, but it is a superb explanation of how the current economic setup uses numbers for its own ends, not as a way to improve things. As Lorezo Fioramonti concludes, "statistics tend to separate complex phenomena in measurable units, they hide the interconnectedness between systemic poverty, economic imbalances and uneven access to resources... the risk is to end up with results that distort reality and mislead policies."

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